Shera: The Broken Ladder of a Village Boy's Ambitions

 **July 2006**

Given the social position of his caste, the Lodhi Rajputs, Sher Singh, nicknamed Shera, began on a proud, promising note.

He took care to oil and comb his hair; took even greater care to dress in bright-coloured shirts and pants within his means.

There are still so many escaping chinks in the country's higher education system which allow the students (semi-students, actually) to have plenty of time to play the role of ruffians, vagabonds, idlers, tramps, and honest workers who supplement some rusty notes and coins to the famished family purse by working in the fields with the family elders.

Shera was from the beginning of the latter category, a liability to none.

He took great, innocent, honest care to earn something for his tiny tidying-up as per the modern times screened and portrayed in the cinema halls and TV.

So he vended berries, fruits, sold watermelons by the roadside, hawked flower garlands prepared by him—all the inputs coming from the rented land.

And all this with equal ease and skills and dexterity, and as a bonus to all these sprucings, he got his certificate of matriculation from the village high school.

More educated and more tidied up as per the average standard of the youth of his community, he was quite naturally bound to look to the stars to rise higher.

The young man thus left the village, went to the city, took the job of a salesman at a petrol pump outlet, spoke a peculiar but better-than-chaste Haryanvi admixture of Hindi and Haryanvi.

You can't hope to survive with honesty in such petty jobs in cities while the higher world flies by you.

So such workers at the lowest rung of profession do contrive to add up to their meagre salaries. Salesboys at petrol outlets are no exception to this.

A few paisa worth of bonus is left with them after settling the accounts as per the meter and the fifty- or hundred-rupee notes in their collection bags.

And given the number of vehicles adding up to the fleets on roads, they are left with a few big notes at the end of the day.

Then they become important functioning cogs in the adulteration racket.

Shera, the ever-enterprising man with a petrol nozzle, taker of great pride in his dress, taker of great risk in ferrying the adulterated stuff from the hidden depot, took a few steps on the path of social and economic advancement.

Working strenuously, he earned enough to purchase a colour TV, a refrigerator and a bike.

Even boasted of a poor girl as his girlfriend.

But then man proposes, God disposes.

And in this case, God mercilessly disposed of his scheme.

The poor boy met with an accident on his bike, broke his leg very seriously.

His bike turned into a trash heap.

And to add to the tragedy, he had no driving licence, which changed his status from a compensation receiver to that of a breaker of law.

So no compensation, no insurance, more money into the pockets of policewalas.

All this amounted to more than he had saved, plus the family's savings.

Costs at the bone-setting hospital were considerable.

It meant debt for his poor father, a long, painful layoff and recovery for him, which further meant loss of job.

So with his legs now not strong enough to help him with running or lifting too heavy a load, he was in the square where survival meant doing these very small things as he was gathering the scattered sinews—salesman at wine and petrol outlets, chaat seller, egg seller.

His drunkard elder brother committed suicide and took himself away from the world of miseries, leaving his pitied, broken wife and two sons in the world at the mercy of whatever she knew they could stick themselves to.

It is a custom in the countryside, though a dying one, yet too strong still, leaving its imprint on families like his own, that the younger brother takes up the reins of the cart where the elder brother unfortunately drops them.

Shera being of marriageable age, he was a suitable candidate for a very practical custom.

Decidedly, he presented himself between the sheets to carry the responsibility of feeding two stepsons and a wife.

Can't afford to keep them in a city.

So now the real struggle to keep on floating on the economic sea is on.

I wish him all the best.